The agency is also the halting all shipments of pathogens from its highest security laboratories (known as biosafety level 3 and biosafety level 4) until safety procedures have been improved.
The laboratories, called biosafety level 4, or BSL-4, are costly, unnecessary and dangerous, he says.
Mr. Grucci, the East Patchogue Republican whose district includes Plum Island, said he opposed upgrading the laboratory to Biosafety Level 4, the highest security category.
Ms. Hopkins said she and people she knew were apprehensive that the laboratory would be upgraded to Level 4. "We don't want Biosafety Level 4," she said.
The big lure of the Galveston job, he said, was the planned Biosafety Level 4 laboratory here, which he will direct.
Lassa fever is caused by Lassa virus, which is classified by virologists as a Biosafety Level 4 pathogen — lethal, infectious, typically with no vaccine and no reliable cure.
The highest security level for labs, Biosafety Level 4, is much less common and reserved for the study of exotic viruses and diseases.
"It is a pipe dream to think that the lab will survive on Plum Island if it is not allowed to expand to Biosafety Level 4," he said.
Many of his research plans await the construction of the medical school's $12.5 million ultrasafe Biosafety Level 4 laboratory, which is expected to be completed early in 2003.
One, who seems remarkably healthy (possibly because he treats his home as a Biosafety Level 4 containment site), does not search for symptoms; he looks up causes.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Representative Tim Bishop said that in a 30-minute meeting yesterday in the senator's office, Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland security, told them that his department had no plans to raise the laboratory's biosafety level from 3 to Biosafety Level 4. A Biosafety Level 4 rating would allow the lab to test diseases that are fatal to people.
